New Impressions of The Lost

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Don't call it a comeback. Crave and Irrational sparkle with a new rendition of The Lost.

By Douglass C. Perry

Several readers inquired recently about Crave and Irrational Games' The Lost. What happened to it? Was it killed? The Lost was indeed lost, at least from the public eye. After E3 and behind the scenes, Irrational Games, the company that brought gamers the exceptional System Shock 2, went into deep meditation and decided to take the input it received from the gamers/journalists/kids who saw and played it, and turn the game around. The big dilemma? Everyone appeared to love the ideas behind the game, but nobody was hot on the way it looked. So Irrational decided to switch middleware (put simply, the tools used to help build graphics engines), from the Lithtek 3.0 engine to the Unreal Warfare engine, and the difference has made all the difference. The Lost appeared at our office, in pre-alpha form, looking better than it ever did, packing more textures than ever, and offering encouraging gameplay and storyline aspects.

For those who don't know the story behind The Lost, it's a macabre, tragic story of a woman named Amanda (Ian Vogel, the designer of the game, called her Pink Amanda) whose daughter is taking into the pits of hell, and she has decided to go down after to save her. It's a simple deal, her soul for a chance to save her daughter. That's the very basic backstory, which is far more detailed and interesting, but we have told it many times in our The Lost Diaries, so check it out when you've finished here. Amanda travels down to hell in human form, meeting up with several entities who she's able to trade identities with, Shadow, Light, Corruption, and Instinct. Instinct is best for close combat, Light is best for healing and strategic defensive spell casting, Shadow is essentially a thief, an expert at stealth and deception, and Corruption is a powerful mage-like character. The two characters we played were Instinct and Shadow.

From the several chambers and pits of hell we witnessed, the attention to detail came through in several form, from the story-based cutscenes to the several conversations we held with hellish storm troopers and freaky, decaying creatures littering the living, breathing environments, to the instant ability to switch character forms. Players view the game from a third-person perspective, with free ranging control of the camera during gameplay, and on occasion, the camera zooms in, or changes to a first-person perspective, for certain grapple sequences. The idea is to save Amanda's daughter, but during the adventure, players end up freeing "The Lost," former people who died wrongly. Once freed, these "Lost Souls" tell their story through conversation of how they died, in gory, depressing detail. The idea is to add layers of story to your already convincing one, and the immersion process of telling the story vocally rather than visually enables players to visualize these occurrences through their own imagination.

The version we saw is going under heavy development right now. The framerate isn't quite up to speed yet, and the whole game seems a bit unstable, which is logical seeing as how it's in alpha form. But one can see the direction the game is headed. The third-person perspective is free, but players can also lock onto the closest enemy by pressing a single button. The enemies are varied an scattered, some bring whole creatures, while others are designed as half things, partially decayed creatures painfully fused to metal contraptions that cause onlookers pain just seeing them.

The forms Amanda takes each have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it becomes clear as you play that learning their abilities and switching often is valuable. For instance, Instinct is a strong melee character who beats up on bigger grunts and unruly dead things with a sweet set of swords and the like. But melee isn't always the best way to tread through the hallways of hell. Switching to Shadow is often useful. Shadow is weak when it comes to straight up combat, but he exceeds in various other forms of combat and attack. Shadow has the ability to grapple across huge rooms, passing up enemies so to attack them from behind, or avoiding them altogether. He can also reach high places where only special pickups he can reach are found.

Attacking from behind is also a specialty of his, and several sweet stealth attack cutscenes are being worked on to show off this specialty. Another clever ability Shadow is capable of appears in the form of turrets. Upon seeing an enemy, Shadow runs by and drops a missile-deploying turret, and the lets the fireworks begin. The turret will shoot off missiles every few seconds or so, while the enemy focuses its attention on it, instead of you, leaving you free to attack from behind. Sweet.

What's going to make RPG and adventure gamers happy is the strong, well-balanced menu system, which features tons of items, some which cost mana while others cost none. Weapons each contain several upgradeable levels, which means players can customize their characters for balance or for top-heavy melee or magic attacks.

The way The Lost is shaping up, it shares action and RPG elements in one long, 30-plus hour epic adventure that enables players to approach situation with a constant slew of ever-changing possibilities. Players can select to approach some enemies by talking to them (and paying them) to pass through doors, or to fight them, each with its set of rewards and surprises. Run into an area swinging but you may reap the unfortunate reward of heavy damage. Walk in stealthily and you may find more goodies. Another tact that opens up possibilities, The Lost features four different characters. It's open for players to switch around as much as they want, but what Vogel pointed out which differentiates this game from an action-RPG is that decision making is important, so it's always better to consider options first, before running in slashing and hacking. Adding to the tension is the cost of things. Every attack costs you, so attacking constantly becomes expensive in mana and misery, the currency in Hell. But aha! Exploration is free, if you're using your noggin'.

All in all, The Lost should attack the current PS2 adventure genre with a flexible menu and character system and a wealth of good ideas implemented in horrifically grotesque and "hellish" ways. The Lost, for all its unspeakable Dante-esque visualizations, beckons gamers to explore deeper into its nine circles without questioning what time the clock reads in the kitchen. We'll have more on Irrational's upcoming adventure soon, but in the meantime enjoy these movies and screens.